Results

CEP discussion paper

Universities, new tasks, and the rise of services

Structural transformation from manufacturing to services varies sharply across US regions. We document that regions with universities, especially highly ranked research institutions, experience faster growth in high-skil...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Returns to green tasks in Europe: evidence from online job vacancies

There is growing evidence that green jobs have higher skill requirements, but whether they offer sufficient wage incentives to encourage workers to acquire those skills remains unclear. We study the green wage premium an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Personnel policy in public sector organizations: evidence from England's academy schools

Many governments are increasingly decentralizing the governance of public sector organizations, by granting more autonomy to their managers. At the same time, public sector managers often cannot use key personnel practic...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The firm-pay gender gap and formal sector churn over the life cycle

We find that women sorting into lower paying firms explains nearly half of the gender pay gap in South Africa. Using matched employer-employee panel data covering the universe of formal workers, we show sorting varies co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job displacement, remarriage and marital sorting

We investigate how job displacement affects whom men marry and study implications for marriage market matching theory. Leveraging quasi-experimental variation from Danish establishment closures, we show that job displace...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Capital-skill complementarity in firms and in the aggregate economy

We study capital-skill complementarity in a multi-sector framework featuring firm-specific, multi-factor production functions. We characterize the elasticity of the skill premium to the price of capital equipment in term...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paternity leave and child development

We study the effect of paternity leave on early child development. We collect survey data on 5,000 children under age six in Spain and exploit several extensions of paternity leave that took place between 2017 and 2021. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, skills and productivity

We examine how firms adjust their production and technology in response to exogenous trade shocks. We develop a model in which revenue TFP can be distinguished from quantity TFP, and where skill upgrading is explicitly e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neighborhood effects: evidence from wartime destruction in London

We use the German bombing of London during the Second World War as an exogenous source of variation to provide evidence on neighborhood effects. We construct a newly-digitized dataset at the level of individual buildings...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Urban-biased structural change

Using firm-level data from France, we document that the shift of economic activity from manufacturing to services over the last few decades has been urban-biased: structural change has been more pronounced in areas with ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Tracking the skills behind the AI boom: Evidence from 14 OECD countries

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies and societies, companies are seeking professionals with AI-related skills. This column uses data from online job postings to explore changes in the demand for these p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robot adoption, worker-firm sorting and wage inequality: evidence from administrative panel data

Leveraging the geographic dimension of a large administrative panel on employer-employee contracts, we study the impact of robot adoption on wage inequality through changes in worker-firm assortativity. Using recently de...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-level technological change and skill demand

We quantify the contribution of firm-level technological change to skill demand and aggregate inequality in the presence of imperfect competition in the labor market. We show that skill-biased technological change increa...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

East-side story: historical pollution and persistent neighborhood sorting

Why are the east sides of formerly industrial cities more deprived? To answer this question, we use individual-level census data and create historical pollution patterns derived from the locations of 5,000 industrial chi...Read more...

Journal article

Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics:

Student mobility and sorting of students [Mobilnosc studentow i ich sortowanie]

This study investigates whether improving student mobility leads to greater sorting of students between schools and classes. I isolate an exogenous change in student mobility using the two-stage design of the Polish comp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dream jobs

Understanding why certain jobs are `better? than others and what implications they have for a worker?s career is clearly an important but still relatively unexplored question. We provide both a theoretical framework and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Big city, bright future: why birthplace matters so much

How much does where you were born influence your future earnings? Analysing data from the British Household Panel Survey, Clement Bosquet and Henry Overman reveal that, on average, someone born in London in the 1970s ear...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Why does birthplace matter so much?

We consider the link between birthplace and wages. Using a unique panel dataset, we estimate a raw elasticity of wages with respect to birthplace size of 4.2%, two thirds of the 6.8% raw elasticity with respect to city s...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Who gets the urban surplus?

High productivity in cities creates an economic surplus relative to other areas. How is this divided between workers and landowners? Simple models with homogenous labour suggest that it accrues largely-or entirely-in the...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Spatial Sorting

We design a spatial model featuring workers embodied with heterogeneous skills. In equilibrium, locations with improved market access become relatively more attractive to the high-skilled, high-income earners. We then em...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The growing inequality between firms

Some firms pay well while others don?t; and some are highly productive while many aren?t. New research describes an emerging pattern of increasing inequality of wages and productivity between firms in the manufacturing a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity slowdown and the declining labor share: a neoclassical exploration

We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The great divergence(s)

This report provides new evidence on the increasing dispersion in wages and productivity using novel micro-aggregated firm-level data from 16 countries. First, the report documents an increase in wage and productivity di...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Balanced growth despite uzawa

The evidence for the United States points to balanced growth despite falling investment-good prices and a less-than-unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This is inconsistent with the Uzawa Growth...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments

Are agglomeration and peer effects at stake in academic research? To tackle this question, we study how departments? characteristics affect the quantity and quality of academics? publications in economics in France, cont...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

East Side Story: Historical Pollution and Persistent Neighborhood Sorting

Why are the East sides of former industrial cities like London or New York poorer and more deprived? We argue that this observation is the most visible consequence of the historically unequal distribution of air pollutan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rethinking deindustrialization

Manufacturing in high-income countries is on the decline and Denmark is no exception. Manufacturing employment and the number of firms have been shrinking as a share of the total and in absolute levels. This paper uses a...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Why Does Birthplace Matter So Much? Sorting, Learning and Geography

We consider the link between birthplace and wages. Using a unique panel dataset we estimate a raw elasticity of wage with respect to birthplace size of 4.6%, two thirds of the 6.8% raw elasticity with respect to city siz...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Balanced growth despite Uzawa

Evidence for the United States suggests balanced growth despite falling investment-good prices and less than unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This is inconsistent with the Uzawa Growth Theore...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Role of Education for Amenity Based Sorting in British Cities

This paper investigates the relation between amenities and skills by looking at the sorting behavior of skilled individuals across neighbourhoods within British cities. Using a detailed micro dataset on housing transacti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Making do with less: working harder during recessions

Why did productivity rise during recent recessions? One possibility is that average worker quality increased. A second is that each incumbent worker produced more. The second effect is termed ?making do with less.? Using...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

City of dreams

Higher ability workers benefit more from bigger cities while housing costs there are higher for everyone, and yet there is little sorting on ability. A possible explanation is that young individuals have an imperfect ass...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Locus of control and its intergenerational implications for early childhood skill formation

We propose a model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on the early skill formation of their children. This subjective belief is determined in part by locus of control (LOC), i....Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Has ICT polarized skill demand? Evidence from eleven countries over twenty-five years

We test the hypothesis that information and communication technologies (ICT) polarize labor markets by increasing demand for the highly educated at the expense of the middle educated, with little effect on low-educated w...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... University exam results matter

As thousands of undergraduates across the UK take their exams, a study by Andy Feng and Georg Graetz reveals the importance of the results for subsequent earnings - specifically the value of a First compared with an Uppe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes

How does measured performance at university affect labor market outcomes? We show that degree class - a coarse measure of student performance used in the UK - causally affects graduates' industry and hence expected wages...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Historic Amenities, Income and Sorting of Households

We test the impact of historic amenities on house prices and sorting of households within cities. Conservation area boundaries enable us to employ a semiparametric regression-discontinuity approach to measure the impact ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Driving Up Wages: The Effects of Road Construction in Great Britain

This paper estimates the effects of road construction on individual labour market outcomes using micro-data from Great Britain between 2002 and 2008. To capture these effects, I use a measure of accessibility to employme...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Assignment Reversals: Trade, Skill Allocation and Wage Inequality

Understanding the allocation of skilled labor across industries is necessary to explain inter-industry wage differences and the effect of trade on wages. This paper develops a multi-sector assignment model with both hete...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Team performance and the optimal spread of talent

Alex Bryson and colleagues use US baseball data to investigate whether performance suffers if there is too wide a gap between the skills of a team's stars and the rest....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Import Competition from and Outsourcing to China: A Curse or Blessing for Firms?

We use Belgian manufacturing firm-level data over the period 1996- 2007 to analyze the impact of imports from different origins on firm growth, exit, and skill upgrading. For this purpose we use both industry-level and f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneous Worker Ability and Team-Based Production: Evidence from Major League Baseball, 1920-2009

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team le...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Growth of Extended 'Entry Tournaments' and the Decline of Institutionalised Occupational Labour Markets in Britain

In recent years, British labour markets have been characterised by a decline of institutional regulation of entry routes into many occupations and internal labour markets. This paper examines this change by comparing occ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 Years

OECD labor markets have become more ?polarized? with employment in the middle of the skill distribution falling relative to the top and (in recent years) also the bottom of the skill distribution. We test the hypothesis ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Agglomeration Economies and Labour Productivity: Evidence from Longitudinal Worker Data for GB's Travel-to-Work Areas

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration externalities on hourly earnings using longitudinal worker micro-level data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings over the period 2002- 2006. We find that the effect...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Technology Adoption and Wage Inequalities: Theory and Evidence

This paper develops a model of trade that features heterogeneous firms, technology choice and different types of skilled labor in a general equilibrium framework. Its main contribution is to explain the impact of trade i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Cost of Grade Retention

This paper uses administrative longitudinal micro data on the universe of Junior High school students in Uruguay to measure the effect of grade failure on students' subsequent school outcomes. Exploiting the discontinuit...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of ?Real? and ?Formal? overq...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Leeway for the Loyal: A Model of Employee Discretion

This paper examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist?s perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potentia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skill - Evidence from the Interstate Highway System

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Competition Returns to Skill and Wage Inequality

This paper shows that increasing product market competition can have a direct impact on the employment relationship and on wage inequality. I develop a simple model in which an increase in product market competition incr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Self Selection of Migrant Workers Revisited

Work of low-skilled migrant workers from developing countries in developed economies is a growing phenomenon and a key political and economic issue. An extensive literature has found (for the most part) that these worker...Read more...